Removing Pedals

Hi Guys

Can someone help me out here please. I'm changing the pedals on my wifes and my Giant FCR's as we are going clipless. The first bike has Ultegra cranks and I removed the old pedals with no problem, hover on mine with 105 cranks the old pedals will not budge (and yes I'm trying in the correct direction). Is there a trick to this for some reason?

Michelle Pfieffer, the Carbon Fiber Wonder Bike: A Kestrel 200 SCI Repainted in glorious mango; Old Paintless, A Litespeed Obed; The Bike With No Name: A Bianchi Eros; RegularBike: A Parkpre Comp Ltd rebuilt as a singlespeed.

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You might also try some penetrating oil.

Religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people. --H. Richard Niebuhr

After you have sprayed on penetrating oil-gently tapped the spindle of the pedal with a punch to sort of break up the rust "weld"-and then repeated this several times over a couple of hours -try this.
Put your wrench on the pedal-have someone hold the bike-give you wrench a sharp rap with a hammer-or a 2x4,or another wrench-whatever-but it need to be a sharp hit-make sure the wrench is tensioned on the pedal already-do this several times-it will usually break loose.Sometimes you have to use 2 people-one to carefully hold the wrench,and one to wack it.The setup is important-set it up so the hitter is hitting downward,if at all possible.Luck,Charlie
PS-Sometimes a couple of prelim-gently hits-IN THE WRONG DIRECTION-help.The earlier metal to metal tap tapping and penetrating oil take time-but they are worth it.You have to wait for the penetrating oil to penetrate.

I found the following worked when getting pedals off of my cranks...even heating and freezing them didn't work, but this did:

1 cheap pedal wrench, just long enough to place on the pedal spndle of the other pedal and have the handle press firmly on the ground.

1 park PW4 pedal wrench.

1) remove the seatpost.
2) secure opposite pedal to0 ground using the cheap wrench. Remember to place it to deal with keeping the crank from rotating when trying to remove the intended pedal
3) using the PW4 on the target pedal, and straddled on top of the bike, give it your best. Be careful to not hurt your hands if the spindle suddenly comes loose.

edit: reasons for the PW4 in specific are
*stronger metal
*longer handle, thus more torque without using cheater bars, and better support of the cheater bar when using one
* round handle is far more comfortable when cranking on it hard, thus easier to exert large amounts of force on it.

Best to remove the pedals, while the drive train is intact, so that you can stand on the oposite pedal. Dont forget there is a right and a left pedal, and that the right side is a backward thread--not rightie tightie.

In a pinch, 2 cone wrenches (together) will work, at least on a greased pedal.

Make sure you are using a proper pedal wrench. I had a pedal I couldn't get off with a regular wrench, even using every technique listed above. The wrench would flex and slip when I started using a cheater bar to apply serious torque. A Park pedal wrench had it off in seconds.

okay some might not think this works, but the aluminum cranks and cro-mo pedal axles have bonded due to aluminum oxide. soak or spray with ammonia for a week. then get a pedal wrench with a long handle for mechanical advantage, and go at it. i had the same problem with my alu deore mt-60 cranks with some old wellgo pedals w/cromo axel.

I had trouble removing pedals from my old Cannondale, and it basically became easy after a spray or two of WD-40 each day for about 3 days. I was about to give up, but when it did break loose, it wasn't hard at all.

I also each day after spraying on the WD-40 tried to remove the pedal with hand pressure, and hammering the wrench.

Well I took the bike down to my LBS and explained about using a 15mm spanner they picked themselves up off the floor once they'd finished laughing and took off my pedals in about 10 seconds using the right tools.

All thats left now is learning to use the clipless pedals without falling off too often.

A pedal wrench is a "15 mm spanner" and your LBS knew that. Sounds like they were having a bit of fun at your expense.

Some pedals have spanner ("wrench" to us USA types) flats wide enough that an regular open end spanner will fit fine while others have narrow flats and require a "pedal wrench" because it is thinner, not because the opening is a different size.